Guangdong and Hong Kong join hands to promote cross-border innovation in digital assets, building a new highland for the digital economy in the Greater Bay Area.

Recently, a leading digital asset Financial Service group announced the signing of a memorandum of cooperation with the Guangzhou Data Exchange. Both parties, with the support of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau governments, will promote the establishment of a cross-border digital asset flow innovation pilot zone in Nansha, Guangzhou, build a Compliance investor mechanism, and explore compliant issuance channels for data circulation trading and innovative digital asset trading services in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, helping to create a new highland for digital economy development in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area.

This cooperation is a key step for both parties to implement the "Opinions on Financial Support for the Deepening of Comprehensive Cooperation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area" recently jointly issued by the People's Bank of China and five other departments, as well as to actively respond to national strategic deployments and deeply integrate into the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Taking the coordinated development in the field of digital assets as a breakthrough, it aims to promote the deep integration of Hong Kong's financial resources with the technological and industrial resources of the mainland. It fully leverages the advantages of the mainland's real industry resources and Hong Kong's status as an international financial center, characterized by global capital aggregation and efficient financial services, to form organic interaction and deep complementarity.

Both parties will take specific practical cases as the starting point to fully connect the digital asset trading rule systems of Guangdong and Hong Kong in a closed-loop manner. They will jointly formulate standards related to data circulation and innovative digital asset trading services, actively cultivating a compliance digital asset service ecosystem. Through in-depth cooperation between the exchanges in Guangdong and Hong Kong, it will clarify the digital asset industry ecosystem, compliance, and trial-and-error iteration paths. Based on clarifying the safety red lines and compliance matters of institutional innovation, it will anchor the underlying assets on the chain, press the accelerator for innovative digital asset trading services in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, promote the full-chain development of digital asset projects from creative incubation to industrial landing, and build a digital asset innovation ecosystem with global resource allocation capabilities, thereby comprehensively enhancing the region's strategic position in the global digital economy landscape.

Since its establishment in Nansha in September 2022, the Guangzhou Data Exchange has built a full-chain data circulation trading ecosystem that extends "horizontally to cities and vertically to industries," covering 25 industries including intelligent manufacturing, finance, and health, with 14 data integration application service bases established nationwide. As a key node in the circulation of data elements in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, it deeply explores the cross-border two-way circulation mechanism of data, relying on the "data special zone" to promote the cross-border flow of data elements. It has facilitated the completion of data asset registration for cross-border data products "offshore trade," helping Guangzhou achieve a "zero" breakthrough in cross-border data asset registration and promoting the completion of transactions for "ESG rating data" with partners located in Hong Kong, aiding the landing of the country's first cross-border transaction of ESG-type data.

This cooperation marks an important step in the deep integration of the Guangdong-Hong Kong region in the field of digital assets, injecting new momentum into the development of the digital economy in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.